My schedule is full of flying at the moment, which is much more enjoyable than being in the office, though it does introduce the problem of the management and administrative jobs not getting done. That, I’m afraid, is the price of needing to fly as one of only two Twin Otter captains currently in MAF PNG.
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One of the Otters came out of its long C-check on Tuesday, that’s one of the big maintenance checks lasting several weeks that has to be done every 500 hours of flying. Together with Glenys Watson, one of our First Officers, we conducted a return-to-service flight and found that the magnetic compass wasn’t lining up properly. What’s called a compass swing was then necessary, literally steering the aircraft round in circles to match the aircraft compasses with a master compass on the ground. The compass was then found to be faulty, replaced and the process repeated. Tedious! However, in the end all the cardinal points and 30 lines in between tallied, so we could be confident that we’d head in the correct direction.
*********
After flying some rounds out of Mount Hagen on Wednesday, we flew to Goroka via Aiyura to drop off some people who were staying at Ukarumpa. I stayed in Goroka for two nights before coming home on Friday.
Thursday ended up being a frustrating day because the weather in nearly all the places we wanted to go to was bad, or there wasn’t any means of communicating with the community. All except one that is.
Taking off from the one flight we were able to do, from a community called Manu, we looked carefully in the direction of our next destination, a place called Negabo which is on the western side of Mount Karimui where Manu is on the northern side. While the weather in Manu was good, towards Negabo was grey and rainy and with low cloud all mixed in – not very inviting.
Back in Goroka Ben, the base manager, told us that the agent at Negabo was reporting good weather, no rain and a high overcast. Even if that was the case, we still had to get through the murk first. Ben later said that the agent has a reputation for optimistic weather reports that increase in optimism as the desire for the aircraft to come also increases.
A bit later on another of our aircraft was in the general area and the pilot’s assessment of the weather was the same as mine. Poor. The agent still said the weather where he was looked good.
I spoke to the person in charge of the charter flight we were planning. Yes, he was very keen for us to try to get to Negabo. I explained to him that in view of our weather observations and that of the other pilot MAF couldn’t carry the risk of flying all the way there, not being able to land and then having to come back again. However, I was very happy to do so on the agreement that he took the risk – if we were able to land, all well and good. If we weren’t, the charter cost that he’d paid would have to cover all our flight costs of going out and back with no benefit.
His enthusiasm for us going suddenly diminished. It is always easier to spend somebody else’s money rather than your own!
*********
Fortunately the weather on Friday was lovely, but we were flying to the north of the central mountains where the weather is much better at this time of year. One load was to a small community called Bank, taking them building supplies for a local school. The principal was there to meet the aircraft and told me that everything has to be carried over to the village where he’s based, a day’s hard trek away. I don’t particularly fancy carrying loads of roofing iron, plywood, house posts, fencing material and a drum of petrol weighing 160kg for a day-long trek.
Unfortunately, this is one of the small number of communities that will be affected by the transition to an entirely Cessna 208 fleet. The C208 requires longer runways than the Otter and so cannot take anything like the same load in or out of Bank. I have no idea what the community will do because the airstrip runs along a ridge line with a drop off at one end and a mountain at the other. I very much hope they’ll find an alternative site to rebuild not far away and that they’ll get some government and other help in constructing it.
*********
Flying continues to occupy my time this coming week.
Tomorrow, Monday, I have a flight test with a Flying Operations Inspector from CASA PNG (the local equivalent of the CAA). After that, on Tuesday, I was due to retrain a pilot coming from Australia, longstanding friend Volkher Jacobsen, to help fly the Twin Otter programme, but his visa has not been issued yet. This will have a knock-on effect for the rest of the week, but I really hope that he gets here by Tuesday so I can begin flying with him on Wednesday, or it’s going to be hard to fit in all the training we need to do.
Hey-ho, this is PNG, Land of the Expected Unexpected.
Assuming that Volkher does get here, then Nicki and I should be in Goroka from Thursday to Tuesday. Since there are some nice restaurants in Goroka, we will have some good places to choose from to celebrate our significant wedding anniversary on Sunday.
*********
One of the Otters came out of its long C-check on Tuesday, that’s one of the big maintenance checks lasting several weeks that has to be done every 500 hours of flying. Together with Glenys Watson, one of our First Officers, we conducted a return-to-service flight and found that the magnetic compass wasn’t lining up properly. What’s called a compass swing was then necessary, literally steering the aircraft round in circles to match the aircraft compasses with a master compass on the ground. The compass was then found to be faulty, replaced and the process repeated. Tedious! However, in the end all the cardinal points and 30 lines in between tallied, so we could be confident that we’d head in the correct direction.
*********
After flying some rounds out of Mount Hagen on Wednesday, we flew to Goroka via Aiyura to drop off some people who were staying at Ukarumpa. I stayed in Goroka for two nights before coming home on Friday.
Thursday ended up being a frustrating day because the weather in nearly all the places we wanted to go to was bad, or there wasn’t any means of communicating with the community. All except one that is.
Taking off from the one flight we were able to do, from a community called Manu, we looked carefully in the direction of our next destination, a place called Negabo which is on the western side of Mount Karimui where Manu is on the northern side. While the weather in Manu was good, towards Negabo was grey and rainy and with low cloud all mixed in – not very inviting.
Back in Goroka Ben, the base manager, told us that the agent at Negabo was reporting good weather, no rain and a high overcast. Even if that was the case, we still had to get through the murk first. Ben later said that the agent has a reputation for optimistic weather reports that increase in optimism as the desire for the aircraft to come also increases.
A bit later on another of our aircraft was in the general area and the pilot’s assessment of the weather was the same as mine. Poor. The agent still said the weather where he was looked good.
I spoke to the person in charge of the charter flight we were planning. Yes, he was very keen for us to try to get to Negabo. I explained to him that in view of our weather observations and that of the other pilot MAF couldn’t carry the risk of flying all the way there, not being able to land and then having to come back again. However, I was very happy to do so on the agreement that he took the risk – if we were able to land, all well and good. If we weren’t, the charter cost that he’d paid would have to cover all our flight costs of going out and back with no benefit.
His enthusiasm for us going suddenly diminished. It is always easier to spend somebody else’s money rather than your own!
*********
Fortunately the weather on Friday was lovely, but we were flying to the north of the central mountains where the weather is much better at this time of year. One load was to a small community called Bank, taking them building supplies for a local school. The principal was there to meet the aircraft and told me that everything has to be carried over to the village where he’s based, a day’s hard trek away. I don’t particularly fancy carrying loads of roofing iron, plywood, house posts, fencing material and a drum of petrol weighing 160kg for a day-long trek.
Unfortunately, this is one of the small number of communities that will be affected by the transition to an entirely Cessna 208 fleet. The C208 requires longer runways than the Otter and so cannot take anything like the same load in or out of Bank. I have no idea what the community will do because the airstrip runs along a ridge line with a drop off at one end and a mountain at the other. I very much hope they’ll find an alternative site to rebuild not far away and that they’ll get some government and other help in constructing it.
*********
Flying continues to occupy my time this coming week.
Tomorrow, Monday, I have a flight test with a Flying Operations Inspector from CASA PNG (the local equivalent of the CAA). After that, on Tuesday, I was due to retrain a pilot coming from Australia, longstanding friend Volkher Jacobsen, to help fly the Twin Otter programme, but his visa has not been issued yet. This will have a knock-on effect for the rest of the week, but I really hope that he gets here by Tuesday so I can begin flying with him on Wednesday, or it’s going to be hard to fit in all the training we need to do.
Hey-ho, this is PNG, Land of the Expected Unexpected.
Assuming that Volkher does get here, then Nicki and I should be in Goroka from Thursday to Tuesday. Since there are some nice restaurants in Goroka, we will have some good places to choose from to celebrate our significant wedding anniversary on Sunday.
